Articles
I believe that the accounting profession as a whole is heavily underutilized. Not unique to business size, I find small businesses and large businesses who heavily underutilize accounting experts. The point of hiring someone from the accounting profession is to better understand what happens with money in your business. For instance, accountants will be able to answer: Are sales on target this month? Which product is making me the most money? Who owes me money? Who do I need to pay? Through this understanding, it builds a better knowledge base on what business owners need to look for in daily operations and how they may be able to improve their situation. So where do you, the business owner, start and what services should you request?
There are many different levels of accounting which can be provided to a business and each of them have very helpful attributes which will help you run your business so long as you know how to ask for them. I am highlighting 3 ways you can use accounting for your business which will lead you to success.
This year the benefit has significantly grown, putting more money back into households with kids. It has also changed some characteristics that should be explained. This change was based on the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a $1.9 trillion dollar package, which included the expansion of the Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Credit, and the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit for an estimated $34.3 billion dollars in direct financial assistance.
There is a lot to focus on when it comes to starting a business and setting up the business for success. While creating your business plan and market research, entrepreneurs usually miss out on creating their accounting plan. By “accounting plan”, I am not talking about your bookkeeper or how you will perform your accounting, I am referring to the organization type your business will operate under and what the impacts of that type is on your cash flow. There are many other important factors of the accounting plan we will discuss in future articles.
I want to bring solutions to people within our community around The Villages, FL. I run Blue Heron Bookkeeping, a bookkeeping and accounting firm, which focuses on helping those who run businesses within our community. I want to give back time to owners so they can focus on their product. I also want to reduce costs to owners, making it more advantageous and easier to scale out the business. This, in turn, allows them to provide greater value to the community.
Decision making can make or break a business, but not all decisions are critical toward business continuity. In accounting, we are often brought in to advise in making critical decisions which we call make/buy or keep/kill decisions. They often include a long, drawn out financial analysis that involves sunk costs, involves long term analysis, takes exposure items into account, and leads us to which decision is most profitable based on the assumptions we identified.
Small business owners spend a significant amount of time recording and organizing their financial transactions. These transactions include accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, invoices, expense receipts and more. While bookkeeping can be time-consuming, it is vital to the operation of your business. Here are a few tips to ensure healthy finances for your business.
Which has higher brand awareness, Coca-Cola or Microsoft Office? Though Apple’s iPhone is giving these companies a run for their money, I would argue that Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel are the most recognized products in the United States. Our country is run on those programs with an estimated 80-90% of businesses running on Excel. Many companies run their data from Excel into graphs for upper level reporting but Microsoft offers another program, PowerBI, which provides a data visualization program that is under-utilized and brings several benefits to the table.
Accounting is the language of business and it has many different dialects. Some people understand it extremely well and others understand it enough to get by. Fortunately, I love accounting and this allows me to help business owners effectively communicate their business to the IRS, other businesses, and banks. Most importantly, my understanding of accounting can help me advise and prepare analyses for business owners, illustrating how they can make more money.
Technology is not difficult, this is the biggest misunderstanding which exists in small business today. It does not take a developer or a large amount of money to create automation of small, everyday tasks. Technology can consolidate the communication platforms, keep you better informed, update your customers on offers along with hundreds of other ideas.